Troops rescue kidnapped US doctor

‘IMMINENT DANGER’:US soldiers killed seven Taliban fighters to free Dilip Joseph, who was abducted, along with an Afghan colleague, while visiting a clinic in Afghanistan

AFP, KABUL

US soldiers killed seven Taliban insurgents in a successful pre-dawn raid to rescue a kidnapped doctor from the US in eastern Afghanistan yesterday, the NATO force in the war-torn country said.

The mission was launched when intelligence showed that Dilip Joseph was in “imminent danger of injury or death,” NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said in a statement.

Joseph was abducted on Wednesday by Taliban insurgents in the Surobi district of Kabul Province.

“Today’s mission exemplifies our unwavering commitment to defeating the Taliban,” said General John Allen, the commander of US and ISAF forces in Afghanistan. “I’m proud of the American and Afghan forces that planned, rehearsed and successfully conducted this operation. Thanks to them, Dr Joseph will soon be rejoining his family and loved ones.”

Joseph was now “undergoing evaluations,” the statement said, without giving further details.

A security source told reporters that the doctor had been involved in building clinics in Afghanistan, but details of his capture were not immediately available.

Hazrat Mohammad Haqbeen, the district governor of Surobi told reporters that the man was kidnapped along with an Afghan colleague who was released in return for a ransom earlier in the week.

And “today the American national was freed in an operation. We don’t know the details of the operation,” Haqbeen told reporters yesterday.

He said the men were kidnapped in Surobi, but were held in a village in the Qarghayi district of the neighboring province of Laghman. The governor said the US citizen was visiting a clinic when captured.

An ISAF spokesman said the rescue had been launched when multiple intelligence sources indicated that he was in immediate danger.

“We felt we had to act now,” he told reporters.

Seven of the doctor’s captors were killed in the operation, which involved combined US and Afghan forces, he said.

He gave no further details of where the doctor had been held or on the rescue operation itself, saying they could be announced later in the day.

Surobi outside Kabul had been under the control of French troops until April this year, when the responsibility for its security was handed to Afghan forces as part of France’s accelerated withdrawal from the country.

France ended its combat mission in Afghanistan last month, two years before allied nations contributing to the 100,000-strong US-led NATO force are due to depart.

Surobi, about 50km east of Kabul and along a key highway linking the capital to Pakistan, experiences sporadic Taliban-linked terrorism.

General Emam Nazar, the former commander of the 3rd Brigade of the Afghan army, told reporters in April that between 80 and 100 insurgents were based in Surobi.

“Sometimes our enemies appear on the highway, but they can’t resist us. Our forces smash them. It happened several times but they never got out of it alive,” he added.

When French troops were stationed there, two French journalists were abducted in December 2009 and held for more than 500 days before being released in a secret deal that reportedly involved ransom.

Westerners are a prize target for the Taliban Islamists, who have waged an 11-year insurgency since being toppled from power in a US-led invasion in 2001. Regular gangsters not linked to the rebels are also involved in the kidnappings.